A heartrending debut about a teenage girl in 1970s Brazil who is unexpectedly torn away from her disabled twin sister—and who must learn what it means to fight for those we love when all the odds are stacked against us

Everyone knows, but no one talks.

Dolores and Mita grow up in lockstep in rural Brazil, speaking their own twin language, watching cartoons, inseparable even when they sleep. But as they reach adolescence, a debilitating degenerative condition emerges in Mita. Without telling Dolores, their parents decide to send Mita across the Atlantic Ocean to a hospital in their father’s native London.

The family moves to Rio, and the parents begin to live an expat bourgeoisie lifestyle, pretending like Mita never existed. Tensions are on in the rise with the dictorial government cracking down on protesters and dissenters. Dolores, now the only one who talks about her sister, desperately seeks some way to reunite with her twin. She struggles to learn to read, write, and fit in at her posh school until she meets Andrea: a headstrong, opinionated girl from the mountains who shows Dolores a new side of Brazil—and how to survive it. Both at home and in the country at large, there is a cover-up, and Dolores pushes to find the truth about life, right and wrong, and her lost sister.

In a country where repression and silencing are part of everyday life, Liar’s Dice is about the secrets we hold, both personal and political, and the consequences of keeping them. Atmospheric and intimate, Juliet Faithfull’s coming-of-age novel captures the intensity of forming your own identity, and the courage and love required to forge a different life.